Linux Fundamentals course on HacktheBox Academy
31 Oct 2022
I’ve been in the top 1% of TryHackMe’s rankings for a little while. I’ve really learned a lot on the platform and would recommend it to others.
I feel I’ve needed a bit of change, so I plan boosting my HackTheBox ranking.
I’ve noticed a great deal of posts about TryHackMe and HackTheBox, are hyper-centered on walkthroughs, and I’ve occasionally attempted to do the same.
The downside of walkthroughs is they’re generally very similar, so I’d like to move away from this type of content for a little bit, or at least augment my approach and write more about my thoughts about the design of the machines, learning processes, cheat sheets and in a larger sense; try harder to set these walkthroughs apart.
The Course
Generally, I feel HTB is providing some of the best training for infosec professionals.
I’m not a Linux beginner, but I really enjoyed HTB’s Linux Fundamentals course.
My experience with linux has been that of a hacker who’s read a lot of man pages, built systems, fiddled with *nix for over a decade. I feel comfortable with ELF binaries and navigating around a *nix file system. So, I had a lot of this knowledge from just using Linux, but its really nice to have things laid out like this.
That said, the course zoom through a lot of topics, albeit briefly.
There isn’t a “hacker” focus in the course, it truly is a fundamentals course. So while, I was mostly able to get it done in a few hours, what made it fun were the cheat sheets provided, as well as the challenges at the end of each chapter.
One of my favorite things about the platform is its challenge designs. The challenges build on cumulative knowledge, and occasionally have some unintended quirks. For example, there’s a challenge which asks the user to install and run a simple http webserver with npm. Taking a look through packages, one can find a lot of packages which match this description. Finding the correct package is half the battle, as question asks for a specific syntax.
This was a little challenging for me, as it required a little bit of trial and error, but once I had found the solution, I had also find something even better … a few more brain-wrinkles on the topic of npm which I added to my notes.
Recommendation
HTB Academy provides you with some “cubes”, in game money, to purchase courses, and you’re rewarded with completing the courses with some cubes being returned to you.
This isn’t the most fun, but it is really cool to get started on the platform for free and be able to grind stats until you level up.
My overall ranking on HTB is currently kinda low, due to me not being on the platform very much, but I’d recommend this module for beginners as well as those looking to get a good refresher and possibly some great avenues for more research.
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Thanks - happy hacking!